Neglected: Toes amputated, a mother can't walk after stay at Florida's largest nursing home chain

Kim Duda, 52, poses for a portrait in Cape Coral on Thursday, May 3, 2018. Duda spent five months at Consulate Health Care of North Fort Myers last year after suffering a stroke.(Photo: Nicole Raucheisen/Naples Daily News)

Kim Duda’s tour of Southwest Florida nursing homes started with a small cut on her foot in 2016.

She doesn’t know how she got the cut, she said, but it ended up getting infected and requiring an operation. A year and a half later, after stays at two Consulate Health Care nursing homes, Duda still can’t walk. Now she uses a wheelchair to get around.

“I came out worse than I went in,” said Duda, a 52-year-old Cape Coral mother of two.

After the surgery on her foot, Duda said, her first nursing home stay was at Coral Trace Health Care in Cape Coral, a facility owned by Consulate, Florida’s largest nursing home chain. While there she developed a severe and contagious gastrointestinal infection.

She called her month-and-a-half stay at Coral Trace a “horrible” experience. The home is currently rated a two-star facility on a five-star scale by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

“They didn’t do anything,” she said of Coral Trace staff. “That’s the problem.”

After leaving Coral Trace, she said, she received therapy at another Fort Myers rehab facility and was walking again. But less than three weeks after returning home, she had a stroke, she said.

Consulate Health Care of North Fort Myers, as seen on Thursday, May 3, 2018.(Photo: Nicole Raucheisen/Naples Daily News)

In June 2017, Duda ended up at Consulate Health Care of North Fort Myers, also a two-star home.

The home was dirty, she said, and ants and roaches scurried along the walls and floors, problems cited by state inspectors last year. She developed another gastrointestinal infection, she said.

Duda said inspectors don’t see the worst during their surveys.

“They only show up in the middle of the day when everybody is happy and thrilled,” she said. “They don’t see it when the lights go down.”

While at the nursing home, she said, she developed sores on the bottoms of her feet. She ended up having both pinky toes amputated and now can’t walk.

Duda left the nursing home in November. She now sees a podiatrist and hopes to walk again.

“I’m getting better where my feet are starting to heal,” she said. “But I still have a long way to go, and I miss my life.”